Camp Wildflecken - The Place

In march 1945, the regular german troops left Camp Wildflecken. When US troops during their advance through Germany at the end of WWII arrived in Wildflecken on april 7, they found only wounded German soldiers, and Russian, French and Polish prisoners of war, who had been put to work on the training area. There was only a short fight with withdrawing germans as the US Army entered the village of Wildflecken.

Only days later the war ended and the US Army used Camp Wildflecken as a temporary home for "displaced persons", meaning people, mostly from Poland who had been deported by the Germans. This people had been used as workers on farms, in the forrest and the german industry to substitute those german workers who had been drafted to the german armed forces during the war. At the war's end those in the south of Germany had been assembled in Wildflecken, to allow them to return to their homes.

In 1951, when the last of the "displaced persons" had left Wildflecken, the US Army occupied the camp and former military training area and due to the outbreak of the "Cold War" used it as military base and training area for all NATO-partners. Even Elvis Presley during his military service spent time in Wildflecken.

In 1994, when the "Cold War" was gone, the americans left Wildflecken. Those, who came as occupants in 1945, left as friends in 1994.